During today’s Webinar on Annual Gift Campaigns, we received the following question:

We do not require board members any minimum fundraising goals – giving or raising. Should we implement minimum fundraising requirements? What is the norm for nonprofits?

GIJP Mentor Dan Kirsch provides an answer:

There really is no “norm” and our Camps’ policies on board giving vary.  Most camps, however, do not require specific dollar amounts to give and/or “get” for the board.  The trend among nonprofits in the small to medium size range (as opposed to large universities, hospitals, and national or global scale orgs) is to clearly convey the expectation that board members will make the camp one of their top philanthropic priorities during their tenure on the board.  Some say “make an annual gift that is significant for me” or “make a gift that reflects my commitment to camp and my personal means.”

Similarly, when it comes to “getting”, most camps do not set actual dollar amounts expected.  Instead they expressly set the expectation that all board members will participate in fundraising activities for the camp in the ways best suited to their abilities and the camp’s needs.

Does your nonprofit set fundraising minimums for your board members? Please let us know in the comments below!

In the meantime, check out our Annual Giving Campaigns Webinar recording (and other resources).

Is your donor database working for you? If you put time in up front, the database can make your life easier. Set aside one week for a fundraising database tune up this April. You and your camp will thank you for the rest of the year!

Monday: LYBUNT report

LYBUNT stands for “Last Year But Unfortunately Not This year.” A LYBUNT report is a list of all your donors who made gifts in the previous year but did not give during the current year. If you don’t know how to easily run such a report from your donor database, email Kevin or Joe right now and set up an appointment to learn how to run this and other useful reports. Learning how to quickly run reports to tap the valuable information in your donor database is invaluable.

The exciting part about running a LYBUNT report is that it points to easy money you can raise right now. Research in philanthropy is finding that increasingly donors don’t remember whether or not they have made their annual gifts. Stay positive and assume that your LYBUNT donors love camp but simply forgot to give in 2009, and would be willing to make a gift right now if asked.

Do it today: Run a LYBUNT report, look it over, and design a mini-campaign (maybe a simple mailing to these donors with some follow-up calls?) and set a dollar amount goal for LYBUNT gifts for this spring.

Tuesday: Deduping

Deduping is lingo for removing duplicate entries from the database, as in “de-duplicating.”  If you don’t do this task, you can lose face with your donors: this winter I got three copies of a mailing from an organization with one addressed to me, one to my husband and the third to both of us. It was very wasteful and unprofessional. I recycled the appeals without reading them. Don’t let that happen to you!

If you’ve never tried to dedupe your database before, or it has been a long time, email Kevin or Joe right now and set up an appointment to learn how to do this, and determine how long it might take. While you are working on this task, Kevin can help you to think about other ways to clean up your donor database while you are at it. If you dedupe once or twice a year, this task will not take longer than a day.

Do it today: Review your database, and estimate how much time you’ll need for deduping. Most donor databases have a duplicate removal function. Use this function to find and merge known duplicate records.

Wednesday: Import Camper Records

Ideally, a camp’s donor database would include all Alumni throughout time, current and past parents, current and past grandparents, current and past Board members, current and past staff, all current and past supporters, and camp business contacts. All these people are the camp’s base for support. At some point information in the camp’s registration/enrollment database needs to be moved into the donor database, especially as kids age-out of camp. 

If you haven’t yet set up decision criteria for when campers get transferred over from your camp database into your donor database, you should email Kevin or Joe right now and set up an appointment to discuss what is involved and how to get started. If you’ve set up your system for data imports and do this each year, then this task can get done in a day. Did you know that deduping (see above) is done again after a data import? 

Do it today: Review your process for transferring contacts from the camper registration and enrollment software into your donor database, be sure you understand it, and make a plan to update this Spring. If you have a documented process that is used each year, data import will be relatively easy.

Thursday: Board Giving Update

Every camp should realize 100% participation in charitable donations by their Board members every year. Run a report right now to see if you have reached this goal this year. Do you know how to flag current Board members in your database? Do you know how to create payment reminders to Board members who make pledges but have not yet made their payment? If not, email Kevin or Joe right now and set up an appointment to learn how to flag constituents or create pledge reminders.

Once you have created your Board Giving Report, give your Board President a call (not an email) and share this information. As you share these results, use this time on the phone to create a Board member-to-Board member strategy to create 100% Board participation in the annual fund.

Do it today: Run a Board Gifts report, share it with your Camp Board President, and have a conversation. Provide assistance in setting up individual meetings with Board members who are not in compliance to remind them to give.

Friday: Stewardship Reports

Every major donor, past and present, deserves a thoughtful personal update on the impact of their gifts.  For example, the lead donor to the dinning hall renovations in 2002 should have an opportunity to see pictures of Jewish campers in the dinning hall celebrating Shabbat and to realize that thanks to their gift 12,000 healthy Kosher meals have been served. Does your donor database help you to track contact with your generous donors and does it remind you to send updates on the impact of their gifts? If not, email Kevin or Joe right now and set up an appointment to learn how to set up reminders and keep stewardship notes.

You can use your donor database to track your stewardship of donors over time, stay in contact with your Legacy donors every year, and/or help you with scheduling donor visits to camp over the summer.

Do it today: Run a report to find out the latest stewardship activity with each of your largest donors. Don’t have any Stewardship contacts tracked in your database? Start today! Have contacts, but none recently? Enter a future planned new contact with each major donor so that it reminds you to re-establish your relationship with them soon.

Later in the year, you can create custom reports for each donor to document the impact of their gifts. Writing a simple page of text together with color photos that focus on results and outcomes will be very powerful. Mail these reports to your donors with a personal note from the Camp Executive Director or Board President. Keep track of this reporting in your database, and set up a reminder for the next set of reports to be sent and to whom.

When you try all (or some) of the above, let us know how it goes. And contact Kevin or Joe if you need any assistance.

 by Jill Paul and Julia Riseman

In today’s tough economy for fundraising, individual Board members can no longer sit on the sidelines assuming someone else on the Board or staff is working on raising funds for their camp.  Every Board member can make a real impact on the camps’ ability to raise meaningful, significant gifts to camp, even if they never directly ask for a gift themselves.  This article provides the top ten ways that every Board member can actively support fundraising (and only one of them is “asking”). 

10. Thank: Help write thank you notes to donors.  Send thank you emails. Make thank you calls.  You’ll be surprised by how much a personal, heartfelt “thank you” from a Board member means to a donor, since you’re not paid to say “Thank you.” Nothing is more important to future giving than thoughtful, timely recognition and real gratitude. 

9.  Show-up: Become an ambassador by attending camp events and reunions, and represent the camp as a Board member. Talk with people you don’t know.  Better yet, be willing to take a special list of two or three names of people to connect with at events.  Keep in mind three things the camp is doing this summer and share it with the people you meet.

8. Listen: Really listen to everyone who has a connection to camp, and find out why Jewish camping is important to them. Ask questions that help them see what is so valuable about camp in their lives today, listen to what people are passionate about, and learn what inspires them about camp. People remember what they said more than what they hear, so the better you are at listening and encouraging others to talk about camp, the better the results for fundraising.

7. Learn: …about fundraising. The lingo can be confusing… “Prospects”, “Cultivate”, “Steward”, “Campaign”, “LYBUNTS”, “Gift Pyramid”, “Annual Fund” ….what does it all mean?  The more you learn about fundraising and Jewish Philanthropy in general, the more comfortable you will be with your role in raising funds for camp.  Join eJewishPhilanthropy’s email newsletter if you haven’t already done so. Make sure you read the Grinspoon Institute’s monthly eNewsletter as well.
 
6. Tell your story: Tell the story of what makes camp so special – don’t take it for granted that everyone knows or remembers. Share your story of how camp touched your life or your children’s lives, and why you now support camp. Telling your story will inspire others. Write your story down for a newsletter.  Invite friends over for coffee and dessert to talk about the benefits of Jewish camp, and let them tell their camp stories, too. 

5. Lead: As a Board member, you hold the highest leadership role in the organization.  You provide camp with a clear future direction by ensuring that a strategic plan is in place.  Use the strategic plan as a governing tool to work on and resolve difficult problems that might be of concern to donors.  When a Board consistently focuses on the camp’s mission, actively works on resolving problems, plans for the future, and communicates a shared vision, it truly inspires the confidence of donors.

4. Give:  Make your own meaningful, significant gift to camp and consider a Legacy pledge.  Share your story of your giving with the rest of the Board, and explain the need for 100% participation of the Board in giving. Seek different opportunities to give in-kind resources or services (computer equipment, office supplies, transportation, furniture, professional services, etc.).  Give generously of your time on the Board, on committees, attending camp events, and volunteering.  Try this: in addition to your annual gift, ask the camp professional staff what is most wanted but currently unfunded, and fulfill an unmet need at camp.  Seeing the impact of all your gifts (time, talent, and treasure) is a wonderful, rewarding, and deeply satisfying experience.

3. Volunteer: Support the camp staff in the “behind the scenes” work of fundraising by volunteering to help organize events, solicit auction items, write notes on donor solicitation letters, serve on the fundraising committee, help host donor visits to camp, provide tech help for the Facebook Page, track down long-lost Alumni, edit newsletters, and so on.  Find out where you are needed and where you can make the biggest difference in support of fundraising…then get involved.

2. Share: In a confidential setting, review a list of donors and/or potential donors, and share what you know about them and their interest in supporting camps now or in the future.  Make sure the information is incorporated in the camp’s donor database. If you know someone well, offer to set up a meeting to talk about camp.  You are an important bridge between an impersonal database and a human connection and relationship to a donor. You can help identify with whom camp should plan on reaching out to and re-connect.

1. Ask: INVITE someone to JOIN you in supporting camp.  As you (and your fellow Board members) are actively participating in numbers 10 through 2 above, the last step, “asking,” is really transformed into a personal invitation, as in: “Would you consider joining me in making a meaningful and lasting gift to Camp ABC at this time?”   With careful planning, asking isn’t as hard as you might think.

Every Board member has an important role to play in supporting fundraising, and Jewish camp is depending on your special leadership to make fundraising strong and successful. Please let us know if you agree with this TOP TEN list, or if you have other ideas to add. Tell us what you are inspired to try after reading this list.  We would love to hear your ideas and learn from personal experience as a Board member.